How much power does one book hold? That’s the central question of a unique installation by Mexican artist Jorge Mendez Blake.

For his 2007 project, “The Castle” (named after The Castle by Franz Kafka), Mendez Blake constructed a single wall of bricks—75 feet long, 13 feet high—without mortar. Each brick was placed uniformly and intentionally, as with any wall, but Blake also included an unusual element in the wall’s foundation: a copy of The Castle. As such, the entire wall balances precariously on a single book.

While the book’s insertion seems clever enough on its own, it’s what its presence does to the wall that shows the true genius. The bricks curve and shape around the book, creating a bump and beautiful imperfection in the wall.

While any piece of literature could have made the cut, Mendez Blake’s work pays homage specifically to Kafka. The author wrote privately, not intending to be published; his work was only published after his death, thus he is a largely mysterious figure. The wall represents Kafka’s subtle subversion, a minimal presence that creates a larger effect.

When do you know when you’re a truly digital nomad? This is a tricky question, because many freelancer who work from home of remotely consider themselves to be digital nomads, but the reality is they are nothing but!

In order to be a digital nomad you need to work remotely, indeed, but there are many other features which set you apart from those who only aspire to this (not so) glorious status. Here are the situations which best describe the life on the road of a digital nomad. If you recognize yourself in these 10+ situations, you are truly nomad.

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This Project is for an elementary school it will be the desk for the librarian. It was a fun project. we had some difficulty with the cold in the shop and paint.When the weather gets warmer we will touch up the brown paint. The letters on the books: made with a vinyl cutter.

Founded in 1979 as part of the Dada Archive and Research Center, the International Dada Archive is a scholarly resource for the study of the historic Dada movement. The Archive has compiled a comprehensive collection of documentation and scholarship relating to Dada.

The collection of the International Dada Archive is made up of works by and about the Dadaists including books, articles, microfilmed manuscript collections, videorecordings, sound recordings, and online resources. Primary access to the entire collection is through the International Online Bibliography of Dada, a catalog containing approximately 60,000 titles. This collection is housed in various departments of the University of Iowa Libraries; most of its holdings are in either the Main Library or the Art Library.

The Digital Dada Library provides links to scanned images of original Dada-era publications in the International Dada Archive. These books, pamphlets, and periodicals are housed in the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries and include many of the major periodicals of the Dada movement from Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere, as well as books, exhibition catalogs, and broadsides by participants in the Dada movement.

The Archive has also microfilmed a number of public and private manuscript collections containing material on the Dada movement and on individual Dadaists. Detailed finding aids exist for each of these microfilmed collections.

Scholars are welcome to visit the Archive to conduct research. Those planning to visit from out of town should make appointments well in advance, since access to the Archive is extremely limited when the curator is away.

At the 2017 Dutch Contact Day last October, we heard how staff at the library of the Free University of Amsterdam is going to renovate their library space. One request students made? Surprisingly (perhaps), they wanted books around them. Not just because of the information that physical books provide, but because of the atmosphere and comfort they provide. So, the library kept the books as part of their renovation.

This may seem counterintuitive in our digital world as more and more of our experiences happen online. And it raises a few questions: What role does the physical library play in a digital world? And what makes people still want to come to this place?

Joren van Dijk, a well-known environmental psychologist, helped Contact Day attendees explore and address this fascinating topic. What he told us, based on his research, is that physical space is still very important. In fact, for libraries, it’s crucial if we want to become or remain that special “Third Place” where people gather to engage, meet, and learn in an ambiance that promotes both conversation and quiet relaxation.

What design elements help create all of those feelings? Nature, flexible space, and … books.

Physical space still matters

The theme for the 13th annual OCLC Contact Day in the Netherlands was “Third Places: Experience is environment.” I had the honor to host more than 300 members from across the country who came together in Rotterdam for one day to discuss how we can make our libraries “the places to be.”

Clearly, in today’s world, the library competes with other places, such as restaurants, cafés, concert halls, and parks to name a few, to be the preferred Third Place, where people let down their guard, relax, be themselves, develop new friendships, and deepen existing ones.

Environmental psychology confirms that physical books give us comfort as well as knowledge.

The concept of Third Places was first coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the early 1990s in his book, The Great Good Place. It’s a space where people meet to unwind, discuss, and talk about things that matter to them, their neighborhood, and their community. It’s a space distinct both from the work environment where communication and interaction can be functional, stereotyped, and superficial and distinct from the domestic space of home and family life.

Third Places provide opportunities for a community to develop and retain a sense of cohesion and identity. They are about sociability, not isolation.

At Contact Day, Joren stressed the role of the physical facility, whether we are conscious of it or not, in shaping experiences. He studies how the physical environment influences the behavior and perception of people. And he challenged us to think about how we can improve the library experience for our users and how we can you make our libraries more attractive.

Improve your space with these three tips

If you are considering a remodel of your library space, or building a completely new facility, Joren suggests these three things.

Involve end users in the design. By involving people from your community in the design process, you can respond better to their diverse needs and wishes. Participation in the design process can also increase the involvement of end users at the library; the library transitions from a library to their library.

Bring the outdoors in. Nature impacts people, and research shows that seeing or experiencing nature results in vastly improved concentration. That can be nice views of nature, nature in the building, or even images of nature. Because of nature, people can study better and are refreshed in the process.

Offer a range of spaces. The way a physical space meets the needs of individuals in specific user groups is key. Some space should be designed for social interaction to support group meetings and brainstorming. Some space needs to be designed for people who like to work in silence. Be careful not to ignore the needs of user groups or to place conflicting functions side by side.

Environment is part of who we are

Although we live in a technology-driven, digital world, physical space remains core to the human experience. People long for community and places to go for solace, comfort, reflection, and joy.

As Joren told us, the environment will influence how users experience your library, both the physical and the digital. By carefully designing our space and delivering the services users need, libraries can maintain and grow their role and increase their relevance as community hubs.

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New technologies are changing our reading habits. Laptops, e-readers, tablets and other handheld devices supply new platforms for reading, and we must learn to manage them by scrolling, clicking or tapping. Reading Today places reading in current literary and cultural contexts in order to analyse how these contexts challenge our conceptions of who reads, what reading is, how we read, where we read, and for what purposes – and then responds to the questions this analysis raises. Is our reading experience becoming a ‘flat’ one? And does reading in a media environment favour quick reading?

Alongside these questions, the contributors together unpack emerging strategies of reading. They consider, for example, how paying attention to readers’ emotional reactions as an indispensable component of reading affects our conception of the reading process. Readers draw on their emotions in understanding characters, narrated situations, and the significance of events. Furthermore, reading shapes readers’ self-knowledge, enables meaningful experiences of being recognised, and includes them in communities of like-minded people.

About the editors

Heta Pyrhönen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki. She has published two monographs and numerous articles on detective fiction, a book about the “Bluebeard” tale in British women’s literature, and a book on Jane Austen.

Janna Kantola is Lecturer of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki. Her specialist area is modern and postmodern poetry, and she has written extensively on Pentti Saarikoski’s poetry. More recently, she has undertaken research on animal studies as well as imagology.

Librarians provide training to show people how to search for information and evaluate what they find. Photograph: Science photo library

Beyond books: what it takes to be a 21st century librarian

From connecting with people to keeping up with the latest technologies, there is a whole lot more to the job than stamping due dates

If we stopped the next person walking by on the street and asked them what our jobs as librarians involve, we’d be willing to bet that their first answer would be stamping books. This is because many people’s experience of librarians is of the frontline, customer service staff. Have you ever considered how the books get on to the shelves and ready for you to borrow? Behind the scenes there are teams of librarians working to make this happen.

There are librarians who select the books for purchase, librarians who process the orders and librarians who create the bibliographic records that make it possible for you to find the book in the library catalogue and then on the shelves.

Books are only one aspect of what libraries and librarians are about. Librarianship is a people profession; a librarian’s job is to connect people with the information they are seeking, whatever format that may take. At their heart, all library jobs have a central purpose: to help people access and use information, for education, for work, or for pleasure. In all library roles customer service and communication skills are important. If anyone ever thought they’d become a librarian because they liked books or reading, they would be sorely disappointed if they did not also like people too. Libraries of all kinds are keen to demonstrate their value to as wide an audience as possible, and to open up access to culturally significant resources that they hold.

In the digital age, when information is increasingly becoming available online, there is a propensity to say that libraries and librarians are redundant. This is not the case. Information available online is often of dubious origin and there is still a wealth of information behind paywalls that can only be accessed by those who have paid. We have helped many library users who have only been using search engines for their research and come to the library perplexed because they cannot find the information they want. If anything, the internet has added to the range of services libraries provide and in turn this has also increased the variety of roles available to librarians.

As well as being good communicators with people and active adopters and exploiters of technological developments, librarians need to have detailed specialist subject knowledge to pass on to library users. Librarians provide training to show people how to search for information and evaluate what they find. These information skills sessions are now expanding to include digital literacies such as how to stay safe online, the use of social media sites and online collaboration tools.

In this Jan. 25, 2018, photo, books marked with red stickers, meaning they might be removed from the shelves, are displayed at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library in Indiana, Pa. IUP is planning to remove tens of thousands of books that have little or no readership. (Michael Rubinkam/Associated Press)

A library without books? Not quite, but as students abandon the stacks in favor of online reference material, university libraries are unloading millions of unread volumes in a nationwide purge that has some print-loving scholars deeply unsettled.

Libraries are putting books in storage, contracting with resellers or simply recycling them. An increasing number of books exist in the cloud, and libraries are banding together to ensure print copies are retained by someone, somewhere. Still, that doesn’t always sit well with academics who practically live in the library and argue that large, readily available print collections are vital to research.

“It’s not entirely comfortable for anyone,” said Rick Lugg, executive director of OCLC Sustainable Collection Services, which helps libraries analyze their holdings. “But absent endless resources to handle this stuff, it’s a situation that has to be faced.”

At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the library shelves overflow with books that get little attention. A dusty monograph on “Economic Development in Victorian Scotland.” International Television Almanacs from 1978, 1985 and 1986. A book whose title, “Personal Finance,” sounds relevant until you see the publication date: 1961.

In her review of Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Anomalisa,’ Zadie Smith first discusses taking her children to see The Polar Express 4-D Experience at the Central Park Zoo. When writing about Brexit, she first writes about being taken aback by a fence that’s been put up around the primary school in her neighborhood. Her way of writing about Justin Bieber first requires writing about her fantasies about Justin Bieber. No, they’re not sexual fantasies. At least, she doesn’t think they are.

This is all to say that the clarity and honesty that drives the prose and shimmers through the Zadie Smith essays collected in the new book Feel Free comes from a direct acknowledgment of what’s going on. She, Zadie Smith, is going to tell you what she thinks about something. But first, she’s going to tell you why she’s thinking about it, or what she was doing as she was thinking about it, or what thing she used to think about, which has shifted now that she’s thinking about this new thing. To read Smith’s nonfiction is to read her figuring out how to think about something.

Smith’s last collection was called Changing My Mind, and it’s hard to imagine someone who can change her mind with such fluidity, and make it a pleasure to read. She’s a master of coming at a topic, taking a turn, switching gears, and then figuring something out right in front of you, maybe even making you think you figured it out with her.

It makes sense, then, to open Feel Free with an essay full of personal anecdotes, an impassioned plea on behalf of libraries and bookstores. As someone whose work has been populating the shelves of such locations for almost two decades, Smith is quick to point out her debt to them. And in the essay “North West London Blues,” she pays specific tribute to the Willesden Bookshop and its proprietor Helen, who Smith calls an “essential local person,” because of her talent for giving people what they didn’t know they wanted. Smith has discovered and bought books at Helen’s shop that she would not have known she desired had Helen not pointed them out or had them on her shelves.

As the rest of the essays in Feel Free demonstrate, Smith is a writer whose thought process is lively, shifting, and constantly evolving. But that openness doesn’t go far if there aren’t ideas out there to be admitted, and in the first essay she pays tribute to the people who make sure there’s always something to tune in.

The Bridges Library System, which serves 24 public libraries across Wisconsin’s Waukesha and Jefferson counties, covers a wide and diverse community—but this February, their month-long Libraries Transform campaign will bring together local residents in celebration of libraries.

Timed to coincide with National Library Lovers Month, the festivities will use the ALA’s Libraries Transform campaign as a starting point to raise awareness of the crucial role of the library in the community. The Bridges Library System staff has worked closely with their two dozen member libraries to unite staff in their common goal of community engagement.

Jill Fuller, Coordinator of Marketing & Communications for Bridges Library System, credits the campaign’s dedicated planning committee with helping make this celebration ideas a reality and advises other library professionals to put together an enthusiastic team before undertaking such a project. “As with any marketing/promotion campaign, getting buy-in was essential, especially since this involved so many libraries and staffs,” Fuller says. “Having a committed team to brainstorm, plan and implement the campaign worked really well.”

Today on the blog we’re tackling one of our most frequently asked questions: “Why don’t you digitize everything?” and its related runner-up, “When will you be putting all your records on the web?”

As archivists we like these questions because they tell us that people are eager for access to archival records. They also show that people realize that not everything is digitized. Indeed only a tiny fraction of the world’s primary resources are available digitally. This doesn’t mean that undigitized records are inaccessible or not worth consulting, but you will need to visit us archivists to use them.

In fact, archivists and librarians themselves are behind the abundance of primary sources already available on the internet. From rare books to official records and from diaries to sound recordings, digitized resources have spread the word (literally) that the past informs our present and our future. In the meantime, both non-profit and commercial organizations whose main mission includes digitizing material (like the Internet Archive, or Ancestry.com) have raised public expectations about access to historical resources.

In this post we’ll share some of the behind-the-scenes realities of digitizing and uploading rare materials. We hope this boosts awareness about some important facets of document digitization and sharing. One is the vast army of largely anonymous labourers out there whose work makes these valuable resources available. Another is the existence of the original records behind the images, which archivists continue to steward.

We also hope that people who are informed about digitization will advocate for archives in the opportunities and challenges they face.

But first, a basic question.

Why do archivists digitize records?

It’s important to understand what digitization can and can’t do. A common assumption is that digitization preserves analogue (non-digital) archival records. In some cases – say, when the record is in imminent danger of becoming unusable – this is true, in a way. Think about a paper map disintegrating into fragments, a letter faded almost to illegibility, or a cassette tape turning brittle and unplayable. In such cases digitization – the production of an electronic image of these records – saves information gleaned from the record. But it doesn’t produce a clone of the record (more on this later). At best it results in a digital “surrogate,” an approximation (even if a very good one) of a dimension of the record.

Archivists commonly digitize records to facilitate access. Easily copied electronic files help people consult records at a distance in multiple locations. Of course, consulting digital files instead of originals also aids preservation by sparing originals from repeated physical handling – a vital function that was once (and still is) served by microfilming records.